Whenever the history of the many thousands of temple
destructions by Muslims is discussed, the secularists invariably
come up with the claim that Hindus have done much the same thing to
Buddhists, Jains and "animists". In particular, the disappearance of
Buddhism from India is frequently explained as the result of "Brahminical
onslaught". Though extremely widespread by now, this allegation is
very largely untrue.

As for tribal "animists", numerous tribes have been
gradually "sanskritized", acculturated into the Hindu mainstream,
and this never required any break with their worship of local
goddesses or sacred trees, which have found a place in Hinduism, if
need be in what Indologists call the "little traditions" flourishing
in the penumbra of the "great tradition". The only break sometimes
required was in actual customs, most notably the abjuring of
cow-slaughter; but on the whole, there is an unmistakable continuity
between Hinduism and the various "animisms" of India's tribes.
Hinduism itself is, after all, "animism transformed by metaphysics"
(as aptly written in the introduction to the 1901 census report in a
discussion of the unfeasibility of separating Hinduism from
"animism").

As for conflict with the Jain and Buddhist sects,
even what little evidence is cited, turns out to prove a rather
different phenomenon on closer inspection. The very few conflicts
there were, were generally started by the sectarian Buddhists or
Jains. This way, a few possible cases of Shaiva (esp. Virashaiva)
intolerance against Jains in South India turn out to be cases of
retaliation for Jain acts of intolerance, if the affair was at all
historical to begin with. If there was a brief episode of mutual
Shaiva-Jaina persecution, it was at any rate not based on the
religious injunctions of either system, and therefore remained an
ephemeral and atypical event. Likewise, the well-attested
persecution of Brahmins by the Buddhist Kushanas remained
exceptional because it had no solid scriptural basis, unlike Islamic
iconoclasm and religious persecution, which was firmly rooted in the
normative example of the Prophet.

Judging from the evidence shown so far, I maintain
that Hindu persecutions of Buddhists have been approximately
non-existent. The oft-repeated allegation that Pushyamitra Shunga
offered a reward for the heads of Buddhist monks is a miraculous
fable modelled on just such an episode in Ashoka's life, with the
difference that in Pushyamitra's case, as per the hostile Buddhist
account itself (Ashokavadana and Divyavadana), no actual killing
took place, because an Arhat with miraculous powers magically
materialized monks' heads with which people could collect the reward
all while leaving the real monks in peace. Art historians have found
Pushyamitra to have been a generous patron of Buddhist institutions.

Next to the Pushyamitra fable, the most popular
"evidence" for Hindu persecutions of Buddhism is a passage in
Kalhana's history of Kashmir, the Rajatarangini (Taranga 7: 1089
ff.), where king Harsha is accused of looting and desecrating
temples. This example is given by JNU emeritus professor of ancient
history, Romila Thapar, in Romila Thapar et al.: Communalism in
the Writing of Indian History, p.15-16, and now again in her
letter to Mr. Manish Tayal (UK), 7-2-1999. The latter letter was
written in reply to Mr. Tayal's query on Arun Shourie's revelations
on the financial malversations and scholarly manipulations of a
group of historians, mainly from JNU and AMU. The letter found its
way to internet discussion forums, and I reproduce the relevant part
here:

"As regards the distortions of history, Shourie does
not have the faintest idea about the technical side of
history-writing. His comments on Kosambi, Jha and others are
laughable -- as indeed Indian historians are treating him as a joke.
Perhaps you should read the articles by H. Mukhia in the Indian
Express and S. Subramaniam in India Today. Much of what Shourie
writes can only be called garbage since he is quite unaware that
history is now a professional discipline and an untrained person
like himself, or like the others he quotes, such as S.R. Goel, do
not understand how to use historical sources. He writes that I have
no evidence to say that Buddhists were persecuted by the Hindus.
Shourie of course does not know Sanskrit nor presumably does S.R.
Goel, otherwise they would look up my footnotes and see that I am
quoting from the texts of Banabhatta's Harshacharita of the seventh
century AD and Kalhana's Rajatarangini of the twelfth century AD.
Both texts refer to such persecutions."

Let us take a closer look at this paragraph by the
eminent historian.

JNU snobbery:

Most space of the para and indeed the whole letter
is devoted to attacks ad hominem, much of it against Mr. Sita Ram
Goel. In his book Hindu Temples, What Happened to Them, vol.1
(Voice of India, Delhi 1990), Goel has listed nearly two thousand
mosques standing on the debris of demolished Hindu temples: nearly
two thousand specific assertions which satisfy Karl Poper's
criterion of scientific theories, viz. they should be falsifiable:
every secularist historian can go and unearth the story of each or
any of the mosques enumerated and prove that it was unrelated with
any temple demolition. But until today, not one member of the
well-funded brigade of secularist historians has taken the scholarly
approach and investigated any of Goel's documented assertions. The
general policy is to deny his existence by keeping him unmentioned;
most publications on the Ayodhya affair have not even included his
book in their bibliographies even though it holds the key to the
whole controversy.

But sometimes, the secularists cannot control their
anger at Goel for having exposed and refuted their propaganda, and
then they do some shouting at him, as done in this case by Romila
Thapar. It is not true that Sita Ram Goel is an "untrained person",
as she alleges; he has an MA in History from Delhi University (ca.
1944). And he has actually practised history, writing on Communism,
Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. I never tested Shourie's
knowledge of Sanskrit, but as for Goel, he is fluent in Sanskrit,
definitely more so than Prof. Thapar herself. Having gone through
Urdu-medium schooling and having lived in Calcutta for many years,
he is fluent in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, English and Sanskrit, and also
reads some Persian, elementary Persian being traditionally included
in Urdu-medium education. In Hindu Temples, vol.2, a book of which
Goel sent Prof. Thapar a copy, he has discussed the very testimonies
she is invoking as proof (esp. in the second edition in which he
reproduces Prof. Thapar's reply with his own comment),-- yet she
maintains that he has not bothered to check her sources.

Note, at any rate, Romila Thapar's total reliance on
arguments of authority and status. No less than seven times does she
denounce Shourie's alleged (and unproven) incompetence: Shourie has
"not the faintest idea", is "unaware", "untrained", and "does not
know", and what he does is "laughable", "a joke", "garbage". But
what exactly is wrong in his writing, we are not allowed to know. If
history is now a professional discipline, one couldn't deduce it
from this letter of hers, for its line of argument is part snobbish
and part medieval (relying on formal authority), but quite bereft of
the scientific approach.

Reliance on authority and especially on academic
titles is quite common in academic circles, yet it is hardly proof
of a scholarly mentality. Commoners often attach great importance to
titles (before I got my Ph.D., I was often embarrassed by organizers
of my lectures introducing me as "Dr." or even "Prof." Elst, because
they could not imagine an alleged expert doing without such a
title), but scholars actively involved in research know from
experience that many publications by titled people are useless,
while conversely, a good deal of important research is the fruit of
the labour of so-called amateurs, or of established scholars
accredited in a different field of expertise. Incidentally, Prof.
Thapar's pronouncements on medieval history are also examples of
such transgression, as her field really is ancient history.

At any rate, knowledge of Sanskrit is not the issue,
for the Rajatarangini is available in English translation, as Romila
Thapar certainly knows: Rajatarangini. The Saga of the Kings of
Kashmir, translated from Sanskrit by Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, with a
foreword by Jawaharlal Nehru, Sahitya Akademi, ca. 1960. With my
limited knowledge of Sanskrit, I have laboriously checked the
crucial sentences against the Sanskrit text, edited by M.A. Stein:
Kalhana's Rajatarangini or Chronicle of the Kings of Kashmir (1892),
republished by Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi 1960. I could not find
fault with the translation, and even if there were imperfections in
terms of grammar, style or vocabulary, we can be sure that there are
no distortions meant to please the Hindu nationalists, for the
translator was an outspoken Nehruvian. If I am not mistaken, he was
the husband of Nehru's sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit.

S. Subramaniam's account:

Let us check Prof. Thapar's references, starting
with the review article on Shourie's book by S. Subramaniam:
"History sheeter. Bullheaded Shourie makes the left-right debate a
brawl", India Today, 7-12-1998. This article itself is quite a
brawl: "Shourie has nothing to say beyond repeating the Islamophobic
tirade of his henchman, the monomaniacal Sita Ram Goel who is
referred to repeatedly in the text as 'indefatigable' and even
'intrepid'. Goel's stock in trade has been to reproduce ad nauseam
the same extracts from those colonial pillars Elliott and Dowson and
that happy neo-colonialist Sir Jadunath Sarkar."

It is, of course, quite untrue that Shourie's book
is but a rehashing of earlier work by Goel. As can be verified in
the index of Shourie's book, Goel's findings are discussed in it on
p.99-100, p.107-108, and p.253-254; that leaves well over two
hundred pages where Shourie does have something to say "beyond
repeating the tirade of his henchman". Goel may be many things, but
certainly not "monomaniacal". He has written a handful of novels
plus essays and studies on Communism, Greek philosophy, several
aspects of Christian doctrine and history, secularism, Islam, and of
course Hinduism. His writings on Islam are much richer than a mere
catalogue of atrocities, and even the catalogue of atrocities is
drawn from many more sources than just Elliott and Dowson. I am also
not aware that he has repeated certain quotations ad nauseam; to my
knowledge, most Elliott & Dowson quotations appear only once in his
collected works. Finally, Goel's position is not more "Islamophobic"
than the average book on World War 2 is "Naziphobic"; if certain
details about the doctrines studied are repulsive, that may be due
to the facts more than to the prejudice of the writer.

So, practically every word in Subramaniam's
evaluation is untrue. No wonder, then, that he concludes his
evaluation of Shourie's latest as follows: "But serious thought of
any variety has been replaced by spleen, hysteria and abuse." That,
of course, is rather the case with Shourie's critics, including
Subramaniam himself who keeps the readers in the dark about
Shourie's arguments as well as about his own rebuttals. If Romila
Thapar refers to his review, it can only be for its "treating
Shourie like a joke", but by no means for its demonstrating how
history has now become a scientific discipline; all it demonstrates
is the bullying rhetoric so common in the debate between the
scientific and the secularist schools of Indian history. As a reader
(one K.R. Panda, Delhi) commented in the next issue (India Today,
21-12-1998): "The review of Arun Shourie's Eminent Historians
ironically hardly mentioned what the book was about. It read more
like a biographical sketch of the author with a string of abuses
thrown in."

Harbans Mukhia's account:

In his guest column "Historical wrongs. The rise of
the part-time historian" (Indian Express, 27-11-1998), JNU professor
Harbans Mukhia surveys the influence of Marxism in Indian
historiography, highlighting the pioneering work of D.D. Kosambi,
R.S. Sharma and Irfan Habib in the 1950s and 60s. He argues that
this Marxist wave began without state patronage, in an apparent
attempt to refute Shourie's account of the role of state patronage
and of the resulting corruption in the power position Marxist
historians have come to enjoy. This is of course a straw man:
Shourie never denied that Kosambi meant what he wrote rather than
being eager to please Marxist patrons. The dominance of Marxist
scholarship started with sincere (though by no means impeccable)
scholars like Kosambi, followed by a phase where the swelling ranks
of committed Marxist academics got a hold on the academic and
cultural power positions, and then by a phase where being a Marxist
was so profitable that many opportunists whose commitment was much
shallower also joined the ranks, and hastened the inevitable process
of corruption.

Anyway, the only real argument which Mukhia
develops, is this: "To be fair, such few professionals as the BJP
has in its camp have seldom leveled these charges at least in
public. They leave this task to the likes of Sita Ram Goel who, one
learns, does full time business for profit and part time history for
pleasure, and Arun Shourie who, too, one learns, does journalism for
a living, specializing in the investigation of non-BJP persons'
scandals".

It is not clear where Mukhia has done his
"learning", but his information on Goel is incorrect. Goel was a
brilliant student of History at Delhi University where he earned his
MA. In the period 1949-56 he was indeed a "part-time historian",
working for a living as well as doing non-profit research on the
contemporary history of Communism in the framework of the
Calcutta-based Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia. He did
full-time business for profit between 1963, when he lost his job
after publishing a book critical of Nehru, and 1983, when he handed
his business over to younger relatives. Ever since, he has been a
full-time historian, and some of his publications are simply the
best in their field, standing unchallenged by the historians of
Mukhia's school, who have never gotten farther than the kind of
invective ad hominem which we find in the above-mentioned texts by
Romila Thapar, S. Subramaniam and Mukhia himself.

As for Shourie, Mukhia is hardly revealing a secret
with his information that Shourie "does journalism for a living".
The greatest investigative journalist in India by far, he has indeed
unearthed some dirty secrets of Congressite and casteist
politicians. His revelations about the corrupt financial dealings
between the Marxist historians and the government-sponsored academic
institutions are in that same category: fearless and factual
investigative journalism. Shourie has an American Ph.D. degree in
Economics, which should attest to a capacity for scholarship, even
if not strictly in the historical field. When he criticizes the
gross distortions of history by Mukhia's school, one could say
formally that he transgresses the boundaries of his specialism, but
such formalistic exclusives only hide the absence of a substantive
refutation. Thus far, Shourie's allegations against Harbans Mukhia's
circle stand unshaken.

Kalhana's first-hand testimony:

Now, let us look into the historical references
cited by Romila Thapar. Of Banabhatta's Harshacharita, concerning
Harsha of Kanauj (r.606-647), I have no copy available here, so I
will keep that for another paper. Meanwhile, I have been able to
consult both the Sanskrit original and the English translation of
Kalhana's Rajatarangini, and that source provides a clinching
testimony.

Harsha or Harshadeva of Kashmir (r.1089-1111) has
been called the "Nero of Kashmir", and this "because of his cruelty"
(S.B. Bhattacherje: Encyclopaedia of Indian Events and Dates,
Sterling Publ., Delhi 1995, p.A-20). He is described by Kalhana as
having looted and desecrated most Hindu and Buddhist temples in
Kashmir, partly through an office which he had created, viz. the
"officer for despoiling god-temples". The general data on
11th-century Kashmir already militate against treating him as a
typical Hindu king who did on purely Hindu grounds what Muslim kings
also did, viz. to destroy the places of worship of rival religions.
For, Kashmir had already been occupied by Masud Ghaznavi, son of
Mahmud, in 1034, and Turkish troops were a permanent presence as
mercenaries to the king.

Harsha was a fellow-traveller: not yet a full
convert to Islam (he still ate pork, as per Rajatarangini 7:1149),
but quite adapted to the Islamic ways, for "he ever fostered with
money the Turks, who were his centurions" (7:1149). There was
nothing Hindu about his iconoclasm, which targeted Hindu temples, as
if a Muslim king were to demolish mosques rather than temples. All
temples in his kingdom except four (enumerated in 7:1096-1098, two
of them Buddhist) were damaged. This behaviour was so un-Hindu and
so characteristically Islamic that Kalhana reports: "In the village,
the town or in Srinagara there was not one temple which was not
despoiled by the Turk king Harsha." (7:1095)

So there you have it: "the Turk king Harsha". Far
from representing a separate Hindu tradition of iconoclasm, Harsha
of Kashmir was a somewhat peculiar (viz. fellow-traveller)
representative of the Islamic tradition of iconoclasm. Like Mahmud
Ghaznavi and Aurangzeb, he despoiled and looted Hindu shrines, not
non-Hindu ones. Influenced by the Muslims in his employ, he behaved
like a Muslim.

And this is said explicitly in the text which Romila
Thapar cites as proving the existence of Hindu iconoclasm. If she
herself has read it at all, she must be knowing that it doesn't
support the claim she is making. Either she has just been bluffing,
writing lies about Kalhana's testimony in the hope that her readers
would be too inert to check the source. Or she simply hasn't read
Kalhana's text in the first place. Either way, she has been caught
in the act of making false claims about Kalhana's testimony even
while denouncing others for not having checked with Kalhana.

Romila Thapar on Mahmud Ghaznavi:

It is not the first and only time that Romila Thapar
is caught tampering with the sources. In her article on Somnath and
Mahmud Ghaznavi (Frontline, 23-4-1999), she questioned the veracity
of Mahmud's reputation as an idol-breaker, claiming that all the
references to Mahmud's destruction of the Somnath temple (1026) are
non-contemporary as well as distorted by ulterior motives. It's the
Ayodhya debate all over again: when evidence was offered of
pre-British references to the destruction of a Ram temple on the
Babri Masjid site, the pro-Babri Masjid Action Committee historians
replied that the evidence was not contemporary enough, but without
explaining why so many secondary sources come up with the temple
demolition story. Likewise here: if there was so much myth-making
around Ghaznavi's Somnath campaign, even making him the norm of
iconoclasm against which the Islamic zeal of every Delhi sultan was
measured, what momentous event triggered all this myth-making?

Anyway, in this case the claim that there is no
contemporary evidence, is simply false. Though she does mention
Ghaznavi's employee Alberuni, she conceals that Alberuni, who had
widely travelled in India and was as contemporary to Ghaznavi as can
be, has confirmed Ghaznavi's general policy of Islamic iconoclasm
and specifically his destruction of the Somnath temple. Alberuni
writes (Edward Sechau, tra.: Alberuni's India, London 1910,
vol.1, p.117, and vol.2, p.103) that the main idol was broken to
pieces, with one piece being thrown into the local hippodrome,
another being built into the steps at the entrance of the mosque of
Ghazni, so that worshippers could wipe their feet on it. Mahmud's
effort to desecrate the idol by all means shows that his iconoclasm
was not just a matter of stealing the temple gold, but was a studied
act of religious desecration.

He thereby smashed to pieces yet another pet theory
of the Romila Thapar school, viz. that the Islamic iconoclasts'
motive was economic rather than religious. It is precisely the
primary sources which leave no stone standing of the edifice of
Nehruvian history-writing.